By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- Potsdam police are looking for whoever took two of the lights at the new veterans’ memorial in Ives Park, which is due to be dedicated on Veterans Day.

“I can’t believe someone would do that,” said Veterans of Foreign Wars Roy D. Graves Post 1194 Commander Bob Crary.

“I’m not happy. The VFW’s not happy,” Crary said.

“Two fixtures were removed from the base and taken away,” said Jim Corbett, a village worker who helped install the memorial. “It’s a sad state of affairs.”

Crary said village police told him they could dust for fingerprints and will be looking for other evidence.

“Whoever did this can contact me and me alone and return the lights to me,” and he would not ask that charges be pressed. His number is 212-0020.

“It’s incomprehensible that someone would do this to a veterans’ memorial. Unbelievable,” Crary said.

The memorial, which is to be dedicated on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, was being prepared for the ceremony, which will begin at 11 a.m.

The new site for the memorials, on the banks of the Raquette River, includes the existing memorials that honor the 57 members of the armed forces from the Potsdam-area that lost their lives in World War I and World War II. The other monuments honor those killed in Korea and Vietnam.

Monuments honoring those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as prisoners of war, will be added, and poles flying the American and Prisoner of War flags will also be installed at the new location. A pathway from the memorials to the Raquette River is planned, and additional park benches will be placed in the area.

Three of the monuments had stood on the lawn at Old Snell Hall downtown and were moved to the new site.

Potsdam's Memorial Day observances have been held at Ives Park for years, but the Veterans' Day observances have been held on the lawn at Old Snell Hall, where the memorial tablet honoring the war dead from World Wars I and II was erected in the late 1940s.